by Cherry Adair
“Easssy, Sssara. You don’t want to upssset the othersss.”
They seemed pretty upset to her already as they writhed all over her, their tongues fluttering on every inch of her skin. The flick of a forked tongue inside the shell of her ear made her flesh crawl.
“Do you know that sssometimes when sssnakes mate, we form a tightly writhing ball of sssex? And tonight, my brothersss and sssisters will be part of our joining. And you, Sssara, will be the cccenter of it all.”
She summoned a sheet of fire, sending it flaring around her body. The heat was intense, and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut at the flash of brilliant white light. High-pitched sibilant squeals and hisses surrounded her, but other than a few apparently charbroiled bodies, it was business as usual for the survivors. The smell of cooked snake assaulted her nostrils, and a low pall of brown smoke hindered visibility for a few moments before it began to dissipate.
The temperature suddenly dropped, shocking her. Sara welcomed the chance to get some brain cells collected so she could think. Think, damn it. Think. Twisting her head, she peered over her shoulder to see where Sarulu was. He’d reduced his size, was maybe twenty feet long now. His powerful man-snake body, covered in shimmering black scales, loomed over her. He—it—was coiled between her spread legs.
No!
His dead-fish-colored smile, filled with needle-sharp teeth, widened, and his elliptical eyes glittered. A large green-and-brown snake, as thick as her arm, curled over and under her right thigh, pulling her gaze away from the giant snake hovering over her; when she looked back to her nemesis, she almost passed out with sheer terror.
The clawlike spurs at his sides sank into her hips to hold her steady, and Sara screamed with the excruciating red-hot pain. Black encroached on her vision … and she welcomed the darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Defeated, Jack slumped against the wall. There was nowhere else to go. No place to turn. No way—what the hell? His ass burned as if someone had stuck him with a red-hot poker. He sprang away from the rock and clamped his hand over his—
The crystal dagger. Jesus. How the fuck could he have forgotten?
He ripped it out of his pocket, neatly slicing through the fabric of his jeans. The dagger gleamed with a pure white light in his hands. “Help me save the girl,” he instructed, more a prayer than a command. Taking the dagger in both hands, he aimed for the heart of the crystal portal and sliced downward.
Jack didn’t have time to think. One minute, he was being pulled apart and bathed in blinding white light as the portal pressed him through to the other side; the next, he was staring, horrified, through a ring of giant crystals at a distorted image of a naked Sara covered in snakes, with the biggest motherfucking snake he’d ever seen wrapped around her, poised over the curve of her sweet bare ass.
With a roar of rage, he lunged forward, dagger fisted in his hand. He shattered the crystal between them and kept going. Two-handed, Jack raised the dagger, plunging it hilt-deep into the giant snake’s back, then braced his foot on a lower coil, ripping through the flesh with both hands. With a twist of its body and a hissing roar, Sarulu arched over him, tongues lashing, yellow eyes glittering.
Jack leapt high enough to grip the hilt of the dagger and sliced a few more feet down the thick hide, which oozed black, foul-smelling liquid. He jumped down to the bed, where snakes of every fucking size writhed and twisted around his boots. The faster he pulled snakes off Sara, the faster more crawled over her.
“Sara, run. Get out now!”
There was no answer, and his heart thundered at the thought that she might be … no, Grant needed Sara alive. To keep her that way, Jack had to kill the Omnivatic. Focusing on Sarulu, he kicked more eager snakes out of his way, spreading his feet on the springy mattress for balance. He gave a little bounce. “Come on, you motherfucker. It’s just you and me now.”
The giant snake reared, screaming as Jack slashed a thin black line along the outer corner of its eye. It reared back again, then lashed out with its triple tongue. Jack wrapped the fork on his left around and around and around his forearm, stretching the rubbery thing as far as he could, then lopped it off with the deadly blade of the crystal dagger.
The snake went ballistic. The sound it made was earsplitting. Good. One down, two fucking tongues to go.
No, wait—Jack spotted something even more rewarding to lop off. He went in hard, fast and low, and grabbed the dick by one of its dicks. With a feral smile, he cut through the penis, the dagger like a hot knife slicing through butter. He went in for the other one.
His arms and the front of his shirt were covered in black blood, slick and vile-smelling. The snake tried to shake him off, but Sarulu couldn’t see Jack beneath him, its own body too large and cumbersome. Jack severed the second penis as neatly as he’d done the first.
He felt a soaring sense of victory as the giant snake fell backward, rapidly coiling around itself as protection. Damn thing must be at least two hundred feet long. Jack planned to carve it up into belts and shoe leather before he was done.
Black blood streamed from the gaping wounds onto the already slick and slippery bed.
Sara was up on all fours, disoriented. Snakes crawled all over in an attempt to tie her down.
“Hell, woman. You still here? Go, go, go,” Jack yelled, dodging a slashing tongue. He jumped for it, missed, waited; when Sarulu lashed at him again, he grabbed onto it and swung the dagger in a gleaming arc. The rubbery, rainbow-colored tongue landed on the bed. Jack kicked it out of his way.
“Sara! Go! Get out—” Sarulu slashed at the side of his head, slicing into his cheek and knocking him into Sara, who was staggering to her feet. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs.
“Now, Ssslater, it’sss time for you to die.” The three-thousand-year-old snake loomed over them, its fangs, gleaming and bared, the size of swords.
Somewhere in the mass of snakes, Sara’s hand found Jack’s. A stream of energy flooded into him, and he knew instantly that Sara was tapping into and amping his powers with her own Omnivatic powers. He pulled her flush against his side, his body shaking with the intensity of the power.
“Watch out!”
He whipped his head around just in time to see the giant snake lunge forward. Jack thrust his hand into the white cave of its mouth as far as it would go, then jerked his arm up hard and fast, thrusting the dagger through Sarulu’s brain.
The vertical slits of the Omnivatic’s eyes widened in shock, and the behemoth began to fall like a giant tree.
Jack grabbed Sara’s hand, yanking her out of the way as the giant snake toppled across the bed. The weight crushed hundreds of other snakes and broke the bed in two.
“Is he dead?” Sara asked hoarsely, her eyes huge.
“Hang on.” He climbed a jagged section of the bed, then crawled up Sarulu’s large body. For a moment, he just stood there, staring down at the Omnivatic.
Then he plunged the dagger once more into its brain.
With a mighty roar of escaping gases, the all-powerful Omnivatic deflated like a giant balloon, curling and coiling into a small, empty skin.
Sara came up beside Jack and laid a shaking hand on his arm. “Let me.” A second later, the last of the Omnivatic went up in a spiral of black, stinking smoke. All that remained on the floor was a pile of ash.
With an elaborate sigh, she shook her head. “A woman’s work is never done.” And she zapped an incendiary fireball directly at the remains of the snake-covered bed. The noise was horrific but undeniably satisfying. She dusted off her hands and shot him a grin.
Jack wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Good job, sweetheart.”
A BLINDING WHITE FLASH of light, and they were back in the cave. Sara came to a dead stop, grabbing his arm to stop him as well. “Wait! We have to destroy the portal for good this time.”
She spun on her heel. Flames ate along her arms and danced on her fingers. Her naked body glowed in the fire’s light. She was ma
gnificent. With a giant whoosh, she let loose an enormous fireball from her fingertips that smashed against the crystal mirror, shattering it into a million glittering shards and sending a giant rumble through the cavern.
Jack grabbed hold of Sara and tucked her under him to protect her from the flying debris. The rumbling grew louder. The ground rolled beneath their feet, and rocks and bits of crystal rained down from above.
“Earthquake. Get us out of here!” he yelled.
As the cavern began to collapse, turning itself inside out in a spectacular display of glittering, sparkling crystal, they ran flat-out, taking the stone steps two at a time toward the square of light at the top. Grant’s bedroom hadn’t changed any, but for Sara, everything had changed.
“We need to get everybody out of here.” She stumbled as the floor shifted beneath her feet in the roll of a full-fledged earthquake. Nearby, the cage swung violently from side to side and the chains on the walls rattled.
“Where?”
“Just focus, Jack. Get them out. This place is going to blow to hell.”
He grabbed her hand, braced his feet, and held her steady against the pitch and roll. Together they reached out, found every person they could, and teleported them to the nearby village.
The grinding sound of mortar loosening and bricks falling in the walls around them snapped Sara to full attention. A giant crack rent the ceiling above with the sound of a shotgun, raining down plaster dust and sending the cage crashing to the floor.
“We’ve got to get out. Now,” Jack yelled. He yanked her to his chest and wrapped himself around her, then teleported the two of them to the jungle’s edge.
A deep, grinding rumble shook the walls of the hacienda, and they watched it collapse in upon itself, almost dissolving from the center out into a deep crevasse caused by the collapse of the cave on which it was built. A wave of dust and air whooshed past them, coating the thick green foliage around them in powder white.
Overhead, a brilliant white streak of light arced across the night sky.
Oblivious to her naked state, Sara stared at him wide-eyed and triumphant. “There’s the comet! We did it. Holy crap, Jack. That was too close, but we did it!”
He grinned. “Come here. Not nearly close enough.” He pulled her to him.
“Wait just a sec. Let me get some clothes on.” She glanced at the jungle behind them and shuddered. “I don’t want the bugs to eat me alive.”
He laughed. “Now you’re worried about a little insect bite?”
“The only thing allowed to bite me is you.”
“Excellent.” He grinned. “Then you don’t need any clothes, do you?”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“You know what I want right now?”
She brushed his hair out of his face. “To be somewhere far, far away from jungles and snakes?”
He smiled. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Sara returned his sappy grin, and in an instant, they were back in the cabin in Switzerland, shower-fresh and naked on the bed. Snow swirled in gentle white puffs outside the window, and with a snap of her fingers, Sara got the fire in the huge rock hearth roaring nicely.
“Is this what you meant?” she said with a grin that lit her beautiful eyes and went straight to his heart.
“Not exactly. I was thinking more like this.” He pulled her against him, touching chin to toe, the heat of him seeping into her bones and making her melt inside. His lips were firm and sweet, the kiss perfect. “I love you, Sara-mine. I always have. I always will. Marry me?”
She ran a finger down his cheek, loving the way his freshly shaven skin felt. She looked into his midnight blue eyes and felt him holding his breath. “I love you, Jack Slater. I love you to hell and back. You are my own. My heart.”
A warm chuckled vibrated in his chest. “Is that a yes?”
“I want candles. Thank you.” He gave her hundreds of pure white candles, their flames flickering gently with his movement as he rolled between her spread legs. Sara walked her soft feet up his thighs and climbed his ass, then crossed her ankles in the small of his back and wriggled to get more comfortable.
“Now?”
“I want soft music.”
He gave her a track of mellow jazz, and her mouth hummed along his jaw.
“Now?”
“Champagne. And flowers, and sunshine gleaming on fresh-packed snow.”
Jack dropped his head on her shoulder. “You’re killing me, woman.”
She laughed, rubbing his butt with her heel. “Tomorrow you start courting me.”
“Deal. Now?”
She tilted her face and placed a sexy-as-hell kiss on his mouth. “Yes, that’s a yes. I love you, Jack Slater. Just one thing …”
“Anything.”
“Can we stick to extremely cold climates for a while? I think I’ve developed a serious snake phobia.”
Dark Prism Personal Guide
Note: For supported devices; double-tap (tapping twice in rapid succession) on any image, has the effect of zooming in (or out), Pinch/spread: Place two fingers on the pictures and then spread your fingers apart to enlarge the images. Or, pinch your fingers together to make pictures smaller.
DARK PRISM and snakes - And lots of them. Yikes. What was I thinking??!
Everyone has something that scares the living crap out of them. My husband screams like a girl when he sees the teeniest tiniest spider. I'm not that crazy about them myself, but I can smack them with a bare hand for him. But snakes. . .
My fear (a mild word for how I really feel!) stems from waking up from my afternoon nap as a toddler to find my hysterical mother standing over me with a garden rake. A venomous boomslang (tree snake)from the vacant lot behind our house decided to curl up under my chin as I snoozed on my blankie in the shade of the oak in the back yard. Frankly, I was only scared out of my little mind because my mother was shrieking like a demented banshee, not because I was afraid of the long green thing cuddled up beside me.
My mother, with the help of the old man next door, managed to hook the snake on the tines of the rake and toss it back into the field. (Personally I would have gone for stomping that sucker to death with the rake, but that's just me!) It was only years later that I realized how close I'd been to freaking death! Clearly, I wasn't bitten, since I'm alive to tell the tale. But the experience scared me for life. Fortunately I have a wonderful job where I can exploit these little life's experiences at will.
(btw-South Africa has 35 venomous snakes, and 8 highly venomous snakes. That seems excessive for one country to me!)
I wanted to veer out of my comfort zone (and did I ever!) and write a straight paranormal. (as with snakes, paranormal. . .anything kinda freaks me out. But that's another story!) Since I already had an affinity for wizards (albeit T-FLAC/psi kick butt-take-no-prisoners-wizards) I decided to start there.
The Aequitas and the Omnivatics have been bitter enemies since the beginning of time. There's a lot of history and bad blood between them. Fortunately, the Omnivatics died out hundreds of years ago. . .Or did they? (Of course not, or I wouldn't have a book, I'd have a page!)
Jackson Slater is an Aequitas warrior, but foremost, he's a geologist. (this isn't a T-FLAC book for those who are asking) He's sexy, driven, focused and fabulous. His life's work is the tracking of mystical leylines which give(my)wizards their powers. I fell in love with Jack, and because I loved him, gave him my biggest fear. Snakes.
Sara Temple is also a wizard. A non practicing wizard. When she tries spells they always go horribly wrong. She thinks the whole wizard thing is stupid and dangerous, and she leaves well enough alone. She's living her life happily and magic free. Sara is focused, driven and sexy. (see how these two are exactly the same but completely different?! Lol) And because I adored Sara I made her an interior designer (which I used to be )
All well and good, you say, but did you HAVE to add snakes to the mix?
Well, I could have made the Omnivatics
scorpions, or man-eating termites, or giant spiders, but none of those things creeped me out nearly as much as snakes!
So, yes. There are snakes in DARK PRISM. But that's just the scary part and some will be more scared than others reading about them. (my spider-terrified spouse, said "What's the big deal?" when he read the bits about the snakes. See? One man's spider is another woman's snake to paraphrase)
At its heart DARK PRISM is a love story about two people who were ripped apart and are unwillingly thrown back together to fight a mutual foe.
I hope you have as much fun reading about Jack and Sara as I did writing them.
There's an excerpt and a slide show about DARK PRISM on my website. www.cherryadair.com Feel free to leave me your I %$#@^ HATE snakes message there.
Cheers
Cherry
The Legend of Dark Prism
In the beginning wizards were created when, the supreme god of the Basque people, Sugaar, in the form of a serpent, seduced Mari, the supreme goddess of the Basques, and a daughter of Adam and Eve. Sugaar created wizards out of their children, imbuing them magical powers so that they would keep the world in balance. Though they were capable of walking unnoticed among Man, they had to return every thirty-three days to their home high in the Pyrenees Mountains, reverting to their snake form to shed their skin. This was done in a wild orgy of sex and excess. This process, still adhered today, rejuvenates them and keeps them looking young and virile. If they do not return ‘home’ within the specified time, they retain their powers but they can’t change back to their human form.
At first, the wizards lived among mortals, able to maintain human form so they’d be inconspicuous. Whenever there was a need for a flood to bring nourishment to the soil, or the need for a volcano to replenish the natural balance of vegetation, or cleanse the earth, they would allow it, but still maintain balance in all of nature. Not only did they maintain ecological balance they also kept a careful watch on the duration of wars and the natural balance of plants and human life. Over the centuries many of these wizards became leaders- both significant and not, they became great men and women of thought and science, enlightenment in the dark ages throughout history. And throughout history they also became the scourge of the Earth. Despots and torturers, dictators and anarchists.
